Plastic fences have been known for some considerable time but so far have not been widely accepted for various reasons including their lack of ascetic appeal, cost, difficulty of erection or disassembly, difficulty in replacing individual fence members such as the fence rails or removal or replacement of fence sections.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,554,494, granted Jan. 12, 1971, discloses an arrangement wherein the posts and rails are formed as rectangular hollow plastic extrusions with a series of internal compartments into which wood or metal reinforcing members can be inserted. The rails are secured to the faces of the posts by screws which remain exposed to provide a fence which lacks ascetic appeal.
Other plastic fencing involves slotting rectangular or square posts and inserting the ends of rail members into the post slots as shown by U.S. Pat. No. 3,955,801, granted May 11, 1976, U.S. Pat. No. 4,477,058, granted Oct. 16, 1984, U.S. Pat. No. 4,722,514, granted Feb. 2, 1988, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,161,783, granted Nov. 20, 1992. With such arrangements, erecting the fence is very awkward as either the posts cannot be set up first or have to be set up at very critical spacing to enable the juggling of the rail members into the slots, and either the rail members cannot be removed or cannot be removed without affecting adjoining sections of the fence and the fence sections can only extend from the slotted faces of the posts and are limited to inline fencing or fencing forming a right angle.